Photos seen at trial show boy's injuries

WATKINSVILLE - Jimmy's bony back was covered in swollen, red welts as he stood facing away from the camera.

The 12-year-old looked straight into the lens as he held up his wrists to show open sores and dark bruises.

Jurors in Oconee County saw those images Thursday, the second day of a child cruelty trial for his mother and stepfather who face a total of 82 felony counts.

The photographs were taken by an Oconee County Department of Family and Children Services investigator on Dec. 11, 2008, the day after officials at Rocky Branch Elementary School learned Jimmy had lived for weeks in locked closets, sometimes naked and often in handcuffs.

His body was pock-marked from hard plastic pellets that his stepfather shot at him, prosecutors said, while his mother blasted his face with pepper spray and lashed his back.

Norris Lazarus Walker and Damita Devonna Peak don't deny they used unconventional means to punish the boy, according to their attorneys, but they contend they didn't do anything with criminal intent.

They wanted Jimmy - not his real name - to see how his biological father and brother lived so he wouldn't follow their path, the attorneys told jurors.

The father was in federal prison for drug trafficking and aggravated assault, they said, and his older brother had been shot and was in jail.

"(Peak) told him she was going to make it like it was in prison," DFACs investigator Stacie Lester said.

He stole snacks from his younger brother, urinated on the floor, didn't listen to his parents and did not carry out his punishments in the proper way, the DFACs official said.

"That's it? No other reason?" the prosecutor asked.

"No," Lester said.

He urinated on the floor because he was locked in a closet and couldn't get out, according to witnesses. So, his parents moved the boy to another closet that wasn't carpeted, and gave him a jug to urinate in, they said.

Police officers and doctors described how the abuse went beyond punishment.

Walton County sheriff's Capt. Bobby Tribble, who trained Peak to be a detention officer, testified that jailers are taught to avoid handcuffing prisoners too tightly, to leave enough room to stick a finger between the cuffs and skin. They also are taught to double lock the cuffs, so they can't tighten and injure an inmate who struggles.

Dr. Michael Shuler, an orthopedic surgeon who examined Jimmy, said the boy suffered nerve damage and prescribed medicine to ease the burning and tingling in his wrists.

Jimmy had fresh and old pellet wounds, and scars to his back that seemed to come from whippings with a belt, said Dr. Neal Priest, an emergency room physician at St. Mary's Hospital.

The boy didn't tell anyone about the abuse - which started after the family moved to Athens in August 2008 - because he thought it would get worse, Lester testified.

The family moved to Oconee County in late November of that year and enrolled the boys at Rocky Branch.

School officials questioned Jimmy's home life after they saw he was always hungry, asking teachers for snacks and finishing other students' leftovers in the cafeteria, witnesses said.

When a counselor approached Jimmy's 5-year-old brother, who attended kindergarten at the school, he told her that he had eaten dinner the night before but his brother didn't, witnesses said. Once school officials heard the story and saw Jimmy's wounds, they contacted DFACs the same day.

DFACs took custody of both boys Dec. 11 and placed them in foster care, and Oconee County deputies arrested Walker and Peak later that day.

Jimmy, now 13, and his younger brother may testify when the trial resumes today.